You know that to lose weight, you need to really watch your carb intake. That’s true, if you lower your carb intake too much, you could lose fat and Muscle. Carbs aren’t all bad, they are your body’s primary source of fuel throughout the day and in your workouts.
The Basics:
There are basically two types of carbs, simple and complex. Simple carbs are sugars, like fruit juice, candy, cake, well basically sugar. Starches are complex carbs as they are made of hundreds of glucose units. Unlike sugar, starches aren’t sweet and are found in flour, pasta, beans, rice, bread, potatoes, and corn.
Once a carb is eaten and starts to digest, it gets broken into single sugars so they can be absorbed into the body and enter the bloodstream. Glucose is the only sugar that the body can use for fuel, so fructose and galactose are converted into glucose in the liver. The body doesn’t really care if the sugar came from naturally occurring sugar or from a food additive. It doesn’t matter where it came from, it’s going to be glucose and used as fuel, or stored as fat.
Real or Fake:
Sugars added to foods usually supply empty calories, or calories as sugar with no other real nutrients. Make sure your carbs provide more than just a quick burst of calories and an insulin spike. Eat fruit rather than a candy bar. You’ll get vitamins A and C and fiber. Also, drink milk instead of soft drinks to get calcium, protein, and vitamin D.
What When and How Much:
The US Dietary Guidelines suggest eating 45-60% of your daily calorie intake from carbs. As the body’s main source of fuel before and after an intense workout, it’s very important to maintain a consistent level of blood glucose levels during exercise and to replace used muscle glycogen after the workout. The type of carbs you eat before and after your workout are important.
Complex carbs are great to eat before your workout in order to give your body the sustained energy level it needs to work intensely. I suggest eating a pre workout meal high in complex carbs, moderate in lean protein, and low in fat. A good example would be a turkey sandwich with low fat cheese on whole wheat bread.
After exercise, carbs are protein’s bodyguard and help to restore carb stores and start repairs in muscles. Simple sugars are best consumed after your workout because they are digested quickly and cause an insulin spike. That slams your muscles with needed glucose and protein from your post workout shake to start the recovery process.
You can drink chocolate milk with your shake, Gatorade, or PowerAde with a scoop of protein to get the job done. You could also simply drink your shake normally and eat an apple, banana, or low fat granola bar. Muscle glycogen synthesis has shown to be lowered by 50% when carb intake was delayed more than two hours after an intense workout. Follow this shake up with a solid meal within two hours of your workout.
Summary:
There aren’t good and bad carbs, just the right carbs, at the right time, in the right amount to maximize your workout and your body’s ability to build muscle.
If you want to know the whole scoop on exactly how to time your pre and post workout nutrition, and you really want to know the best way to gain muscle, check out Mental Edge Muscle Building. Right now, you can download the 7 Part Muscle Building Guide for free.
Filed under Nutrition by on Apr 30th, 2010. Comment. 
Proper nutrition is often overlooked; as such, most people don’t reap maximum rewards for their hard work.
A recent placebo-controlled study published in Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise underscores how well thought out yet simple supplement strategies can synergistically enhance the body’s adaptation to weight training. In this study, subjects completed 10 weeks of weight training combined with supplemental creatine monohydrate (five to 10 grams a day), whey protein isolate (50 to 60 grams a day), and a fast (high GI) carbohydrate (50 to 60 grams per day).
Upon cessation of the program, the authors noted greater increases in lean body mass, strength, and muscle hypertrophy compared to those in control or placebo. If you are looking to implement this science into your current regimen, simply mix 20 to 30 grams of whey protein isolate with five grams of creatine into 250 to 300 ml of Gatorade.
Just drink one of these shakes 30 minutes before training and one immediately after training.
Filed under Nutrition by on Mar 29th, 2010. Comment.
Thanksgiving Healthy Eating Tips
by Klint Newton
We all know that Thanksgiving has been labeled the least healthy eating day of the year. If you are on a diet, you will most likely blow it, or make yourself crazy trying to stick with it. With Thanksgiving’s tradition of eating until you’re ready to burst, it seems pretty logical to be scared.
Watch The Video Version of this post right here:
We have labeled Thanksgiving as the least healthy holiday. Well, like we all know, it doesn’t pay to hang out with the wrong kind of people. Thanksgiving should just be considered another day in November as far as it’s affect of our health, it just happens to be guilty by association. The association we give it to food, and lots of it. With this being the United States of America, we are free to do as we wish, furthermore, eat as we wish. Let’s take a closer look at the major food components to Thanksgiving before we judge too strictly.
First up, I’d like to call to the stand, Turkey, the main character in the Thanksgiving feast.
5 ounces of white mean Turkey: Total Fat: 11.9g Saturated Fat: 3.4 Trans Fat: 0 Cholesterol: 107.8mg Sodium: 89.3mg Carbs: 0 Protein :40.6g
It seems like turkey does have a little bit of fat, but it’s a healthy unsaturated fat, not saturated or trans fats. It has small amounts of cholesterol, sodium and no carbs. There are tons of proteins, and proteins from turkey are especially good because it is a complete protein with all necessary amino acids. Well, it looks like turkey is not only not bad for you, but actually good for you. The outcome, Turkey is innocent.
Now for Sweet Potatoes.
Sweet Potatoes, Dark Orange, Fresh, 5″ long Total Fat: .1g Cholesterol: 0mg Sodium: 71.5mg Carbs: 26.2g Protein: 2g
Hmm, it appears that sweet potatoes are essentially fat free, and cholesterol free. The sodium content is negligible, and so is the protein content. It does have 26.2g of GOOD carbs. Good carbs you ask? Yes, the carbohydrates found in sweet potatoes are complex carbs, meaning they digest slowly, providing your body with energy, not your “spare tire” with more “air.” No fat, nothing else unhealthy, healthy source of essential carbs: The Verdict: Sweet Potatoes are innocent!
Up next, canned cranberry sauce.
Cranberry Sauce, Sweetened and Canned, 3 slices: Total Fat: .3g Cholesterol: 0mg Sodium: 49.6mg Carbs: 66.5g Sugars- 64.5.g Protein: .3g
It would seem like cranberry sauce is fat free, but think of the rules the FDA puts on fat, preservative or even trans fat free items. If an item has less than .5g per serving, then it can claim to be free of it. Just keep that in mind. Imagine that it all has .49g and that is how much fat you are consuming. Cranberry sauce has no cholesterol and a limited amount of sodium. There are tons of carbs, 64.5g from sugar to be exact. Why don’t you just measure out 65g of sugar and attach it to your waistline, we can cut out the middleman that way. It would appear that cranberry sauce is guilty! At least the canned sugary kind is.
Now for the stuffing:
Stuffing, bread, prep/dry mix 1/2cup Total Fat: 8.6g Saturated Fat: 1.7g Cholesterol: 0mg Sodium: 543mg Carbs: 21.7g Sugars: 2.1g Protein: 3.2g
Stuffing has a bit of fat, but not bad fat. It has negligible amounts of cholesterol and protein, but a boatload of sodium. This tasty treat has a lot of sodium, but less than one can of most canned goods. So compared to most people’s diets, stuffing is low in sodium. The carbs are a little high, but the sugar isn’t. That means that the carbs are actual food and not sugar. Now these carbs are from the white bread found in the mix, so they aren’t the best, but 21g of it isn’t enough to worry about, it’s less carbs than a 20oz Gatorade. The Verdict: Innocent!
I’ve seen all I need. We have learned that turkey is actually healthy, canned cranberries are loaded with sugar, sweet potatoes are great, and stuffing isn’t healthy, but isn’t that bad either.
Is Thanksgiving guilty? No, it’s innocent. Turkey, sweet potatoes, and stuffing might actually be our healthiest meal of the year with small healthy portions.
So if Thanksgiving dinner is basically a healthy meal, who is guilty?
No matter what you eat, whether it’s turkey or a hamburger, if you eat too much you will gain weight. If you eat more calories than you burn, you will gain weight.
So what’s the problem with Thanksgiving? We overeat. Not only do we overeat on healthy real food, but we gorge ourselves on desserts. I’m not even going to go there, we all know what we should and shouldn’t be eating when it comes to dessert.
So get off of Thanksgiving’s case, its not guilty, we are. This year, instead of getting so stuffed we have to be rolled away from the table, how about we take responsibility for ourselves and know when to call it quits, and actually do it. This year, instead of complaining how miserable we are from overeating, let’s give thanks to the lord that we actually have more than enough to eat and have our needs provided for.
Have A Happy Thanksgiving.
Klint Newton has created his 7 Part Muscle Building Guide that you can pick up, if done before Thankgiving, for free. Klint Newton is a certified expert in teaching people the best way to gain muscle. Get your copy of his 7 Part Muscle Building Guide Now.
Filed under Nutrition by on Nov 22nd, 2009. 2 Comments.
